This excellent revenge-themed Shaw Brothers epic is the kind of film they did so well. My favourite Chinese director, Chang Cheh, is on hand to choreograph the mayhem in this brutal tale of bloodshed and murder, set in 1920s Peking. In many ways this is a familiar film; we saw almost exactly the same type of antics in the later BOXER FROM SHANTUNG, but that doesn't stop this being thrilling.
The film is headlined by two leading action stars of the day, David Chiang and Ti Lung. Lung has a small role here, playing a guy who falls foul of some gangster types and finds himself murdered in a particularly vicious fashion. His brother is Chiang, who isn't about to let things rest. As usual, our hero finds himself working his way through the enemy, starting off with lowly henchmen before facing the inner circle of tough crime bosses and a sniper thrown into the mix too.
There isn't a slow moment in this movie, which really focuses on the lean, mean storyline. The cast are excellent: the bad guys slimy, the good guys stoic and stony-faced. Chiang has never been more stylish and stone-faced than he is here. The various chase and action sequences are all expertly staged, with a highlight being some fighting amid the high balconies above a theatre performance. Inevitably the movie is book-ended by a couple of huge one-vs-many fights, with the outcome pretty much inevitable in both; still, these are without a doubt the finest moments of the film and I'll never get tired of watching this sort of mayhem. A real classic, this.
The film is headlined by two leading action stars of the day, David Chiang and Ti Lung. Lung has a small role here, playing a guy who falls foul of some gangster types and finds himself murdered in a particularly vicious fashion. His brother is Chiang, who isn't about to let things rest. As usual, our hero finds himself working his way through the enemy, starting off with lowly henchmen before facing the inner circle of tough crime bosses and a sniper thrown into the mix too.
There isn't a slow moment in this movie, which really focuses on the lean, mean storyline. The cast are excellent: the bad guys slimy, the good guys stoic and stony-faced. Chiang has never been more stylish and stone-faced than he is here. The various chase and action sequences are all expertly staged, with a highlight being some fighting amid the high balconies above a theatre performance. Inevitably the movie is book-ended by a couple of huge one-vs-many fights, with the outcome pretty much inevitable in both; still, these are without a doubt the finest moments of the film and I'll never get tired of watching this sort of mayhem. A real classic, this.